Aa - Apple Unit

I think the Aa - Apple Unit has been our favorite so far! Who doesn't love homemade apple treats? We definitely enjoyed it.

We created a Apple Color Graph to practice our graphing. We had three different apple colors and Little Bear pasted coordinating paper squares to his graph to represent the number of apples we had in each color. He really enjoyed this simple task.

This was alot of fun! Even Papa (my dad) joined in on the guessing. He guessed way out there and the kids thought that was a riot! Little Bear got the number of seeds in the red apple correct!

I found a little free print-out online of an apple taste testing journal and stapled the pages together. Little Bear loved this. It had apple predictions, a graph page to graph the results (and because there were just a few of us taste testing, we graphed for each apple the number of people who liked it, and more than one could be liked) and then a result page.

The results page. It even had a bit of math to it and Little Bear had to use his noggin!

The finished Apple Color Graph. Nothing fancy but was a huge hit. Not pictured because I didn't take any photos was a dice game "Roll an Apple Tree".   Little Bear enjoyed this and I had to print several sheets so he could play again. Will keep this in mind for the future themes/units and may laminate the sheet instead. 

Trying apple sauce. Little Bear has had it before, but Bug was very hesitant.. actually he had made up his mind already that he did not like it!

Coring and peeling apples for apple crisp.

Ready to go in to the oven!

Apple Crisp! This stuff is DELICIOUS!!! Go grab the recipe over at How Does She? The homemade caramel sauce is to die for too!

Ll - Leaf Unit

We spent a couple weeks covering the Ll Leaf unit. We read about leaves in 'I Am A Leaf' by Jean Marzollo. Very cute book and my kids loved the illustrations. 

Little Bear working on a worksheet.

Cut and paste worksheets. Little Bear has no trouble with these at all. :]

We gathered several leaves while at the playground one day and brought them home. Using our giant roll of paper, we placed several leaves underneath and then did leaf rubbings. The kids loved how the leaves left imprints of themselves with the crayons.

Little Miss wanted to help too. :]

Gingko leaf from our yard. These turn such a brilliant yellow in the fall!

Loving the 3-D effect the kids created using several colors over the rubbings. So cool!

Somebody turned 6 this September! :D

Mm - Moon Unit

We've been missing for several weeks because we've been on vacation. We all had a blast and got to visit new places and meet new faces. I'm always happy to come home and sleep in my own bed and get back to our routine though. I did not post our weekly report for the Moon Mm unit since we left shortly after finishing our school week. Here's what we did for Moon Mm.

We made homemade 'moon dough'. You can find out how to make it too over at Confessions of a Homeschooler. We substituted the baby oil and used vegetable oil instead. The baby oil may smell nicer, but I have curious snackers and baby oil can be fatal if ingested. Sure enough, two out of three of my sneaky snackers tried the 'moon dough'! We started in the garage but that started to get a little messy..

So to the front yard we went! The kids took turns tossing in balls of different weights and sizes to demonstrate how the craters on the moon were formed. I would suggest to double the recipe for this, because we used a big pan and our 'moon dough' was not very deep. Still, it got the idea across! 'Moon dough' was a hit!

Free play in the 'moon dough'!

We made moon phase cards out of black construction paper and white crayon. Then we played a speed round of "Guess Which Phase" with the cards. Bear caught on very quickly!

We made moon cookies after we read 'The Moon Might Be Milk' by Lisa Shulman. Loved the book and the recipe for the moon cookies, they were delicious!!! 

Bug eating his moon!

Bear working on eating his moon through the phases.

New moon! ;] Need another cookie!

Drawing an 'X' on the moon map so we can take a trip to the moon.

All set for the moon in 3.. 2.. 1..

BLAST OFF!!!!

Exploring the moon in super exaggerated steps. Then it was time to head back to the space ship to head back to Earth.. but not until we got through a...

METEOR SHOWER!!!

OH NO!!!

AAAHH!!!!

This was such a hit with the boys. They laughed and laughed! I caught them playing again later on another voyage to the moon. Win! ;]

See you again next week for a re-cap of our Ll Leaf week!

Ss - Sun Unit!

Our sun unit was so much fun! We are still getting used to a routine, and I'm sure we will have it down in a few more weeks. Most of our hiccup is the Little Miss wanting to interrupt and have the spotlight! We love her lots, so it's ok! :]

Here are some highlights of our 'SUN' week!

We made a sundial using a large piece of paper, a straw, some playdoh, a marker, ruler and of course the sun!

We stuck the straw into the cup of playdoh to create our sundial and held our paper down with rocks, just to make sure it didn't move.. we ended up having to move our location a few times because of tree shadows though!

Marking another hour. We went up to 4 o'clock then it got a bit too cloudy to mark anymore. Looking back now, I wished we had only marked them out to the length of the shadow, rather, we marked it the whole length of the ruler.

We painted coffee filters with watercolors to look like the sun, before Little Miss wanted to dive into our paints too. 

Our super delicious sun tea: Before & After!

I realize now I didn't take as many pictures of our week as I had thought or anticipated. We made suns out of coffee filters and used our inflatable globe in the dark bathroom with our flashlight representing the sun. Bear thought it was so cool how it is night somewhere else while it is our daytime. 

Of course, our week was a wild and crazy one.. I think it was the few days of Autumn like temperatures we had. The kiddos were super energized and that resulted in alot of outside time too. :]

Our book basket consisted of these books during our "SUN" week:

Bear Shadow by Frank Asch

What The Sun Sees - Nancy Tafuri

Wake Up, Sun! - David L Harrison

Exploring The Sun - Rebecca Olien

The Sun Is My Favorite Star- Frank Asch

Shadows - Carolyn Otto

Guess Whose Shadow - Stephen R. Swinburn

The Sun - Charlotte Guillain

The Sun : Our Nearest Star - Trudy E. Bell

Week 2 of Creation

We have successfully finished week 2 of school and the last week of the creation unit. Here are a few highlights as we wrapped up our study this week!

Bear's creation days poster.

Adding some color to the cover page we printed for the Creation Book. I should have gotten a better picture of this process, because Bear was wearing his Batman mask. :]

Not really sure why Bear wanted to write 'Mom' on the cover. He is so silly!

I found a bunch of clip art and sorted them into two different pages, one God-made and one man-made. We then cut them out and Bear sorted them out onto a big card stock sheet. He enjoyed this activity!

Looking forward to a weekend in the pool to escape this crazy heat before we start our SUN unit!!! Hope God blessed your week!

Creation Days 4, 5 & 6!

We've covered days 4, 5 and 6 of Creation since I last posted. Day 4 & 5 were last week, but we had such a busy weekend I have not had a chance to post about them until now. Bear is definitely catching on and remembering what was created on each day. We've sung a little song for each correlating day, 'Days Of Creation'.

 

Bear particularly enjoyed learning about what God created on the 4th day. He's very interested in planets (Saturn is very cool right now) and black holes (which he finds interestingly scary). The swirly line down his paper he says is the Milky Way. It's also complete with the aforementioned black holes and Saturn. :]

Here's what our white board has looked like during the past week. I found this idea over at answersingenesis.org I sectioned it off into 3 equal parts and labeled them 1-3 on the left hand side in blue, and then 4-6 in red on the right hand side. Of course, you can use any color, just make sure you have two different ones. For each day of 1-3 we drew what God created in blue, and then 4-6 we drew what was created in red. It helps make a visual of how God was setting up the environments to sustain the life he was getting ready to create.

* I should note on Day 1 in this photo, the light separating from dark (center) is all red as I was having to fix what the Little Miss had smudged. :] It was blue.

Hope you all are having a wonderful week!

Day Two & Three - Sky, Land, Plants & Seas!

We've made it through day 3 of school (and Day 3 of Creation) successfully! My Father's World - K is a wonderful curriculum and we are loving it so far. Here is some of what we did the past two days.

Bear is practicing his handwriting each day.

He's made a page each day of Creation so far and will put them together after Day 7 for our Creation Book!

Wonderful little book, simple, quick and beautifully illustrated. The kids went back through and talked about their favorite illustrations, which I explained was another word for 'drawings'!

I have found a wonderful excel spreadsheet that is a weekly summary for each unit in MFW-K. I hope to post a link to the wonderful blog I have discovered it on once I verify the links work correctly!